Bc. Marián Trpkoš, a student at the Faculty of Information Technology of the Czech Technical University in Prague (FIT CTU), developed a comprehensive solution as part of his bachelor’s thesis that enables users to design and implement their own custom lighting effects for cars. The result is a web-based 3D application for creating lighting animations together with a hardware prototype that allows the designed effects to be transferred directly into a real vehicle. For his work, he received the Dean’s Award for the summer semester of the 2024/2025 academic year.
Today’s cars are no longer merely means of transportation; they are becoming expressions of their owners’ individuality. Vehicle customization is not limited to the appearance of the bodywork but also includes lighting, which gives a car its own character and style. At the same time, lights are not only an aesthetic element but also a functional component that improves safety and enables communication between drivers. For automotive enthusiasts, modifying vehicle lighting represents an attractive way to make their car stand out. However, existing solutions often offer only limited options – for example, ready-made LED modules with predefined effects. Anyone who wants to create completely unique lighting animations is usually forced to rely on complex and technically demanding custom development.
Marián Trpkoš decided to address this challenge in his thesis. He developed a solution that allows users to design lighting animations using a web-based 3D editor and convert these effects into specialized code. This code can then be uploaded to a custom hardware module integrated directly into the vehicle. The editor provides users with complete control over the behavior of individual lighting elements and enables the creation of complex lighting effects in a way similar to professional animation software.
“The goal was to create a universal tool that allows users not only to design their own lighting effects but also to transfer them into a real automotive environment. I did not want to create effects for a single specific car model, but rather develop a system that can be adapted to any vehicle,” explains Marián Trpkoš.
The entire solution was successfully tested on a real vehicle – the animations were implemented into the front headlight system and worked as expected.
Both the application and the hardware are ready for further development. In the future, the author plans to transform the hardware module prototype into a fully developed revision and enhance the application with features such as more accurate 3D previews, expanded effects, multiple animations, or even integration with the vehicle’s CAN bus, which would allow lighting sequences to be triggered based on specific events – for example, when locking the vehicle or switching driving modes.
“My goal was to provide creators and enthusiasts with a simple tool designed to handle complex animations and help overcome current limitations. The biggest challenge was designing a portable animation code format, determining how to convert animations into it, and how to play them back directly in a vehicle,” adds Marián Trpkoš.
“The thesis consists of several parts – an editor, a player, and an interpreter – and the student handled all of them excellently. Integrating the output into a real car is simply the icing on the cake,” says Ing. Tomáš Nováček, the thesis supervisor.
Automotive lighting is subject to strict homologation standards that define parameters such as color, intensity, and light frequency. Therefore, the application is not intended for direct use in regular road traffic. It primarily serves as a development and experimental tool for designing, testing, and demonstrating lighting effects – for example, in show cars, prototypes, or educational and laboratory environments.
